Great Basin National Park, 2015

We visited Great Basin National Park way back in 1990, not long after it opened. I climbed Wheeler Peak while the girls did the Alpine Lakes Trail. Obviously, it was much earlier in the summer, as our photos show considerable snow, even down to 10,000 feet. Thus: http://roadeveron.blogspot.com/2012/02/wheeler-peak-nevada-1990.html. Among memories of that visit were the bugs that descended--at 10,000 feet--on our camper then and devoured all the bug guts accumulated in our drive from Dallas. In 2015, Vicki and I contented ourselves with a couple of 3 mile hikes from the Wheeler Peak campground. At 10,000+ feet, that was plenty for us just now.

The night before visiting Great Basin we camped at a nice,
new BLM campground at Sacramento Pass

Wheeler Peak from the east

Fall color well underway

Shorter, more rugged half of the mountain

In the bristlecone pine forest

Bristlecone pines are among the oldest living things, some in
this forest clocked (dendrochronology) at more than 5,000 years

With the harshness of location and altitude,
they have to be pretty rugged, adaptive
specimens

This one, I think, was rated at 3,200 years old

Terrain about 10,400 feet

Note the bristles

More of the terrain

Ditto

Looking down to the basin...smoke arriving from the disastrous
California fires

Artsy view from a rest stop

Next day, Lake Stella, a fragment of its 1990 self; there was
barely enough water in Lake Teresa to photograph; both will
be dry lakes in the near future

But the color was grand, especially the orange quakies

Hickison Petroglyphs

Some miles down the road and over the pass from Austin are the Hickison Petroglyphs, a BLM interpretive site. Unfortunately, the pamphlets from the self-guided trail were all gone, so we just walked the trail and gathered what we could. The petroglyphs are thought to be some 10,000 years old, which is indeed impressive.

Perhaps it all looked differently 10,000 years ago or more...
water in the lakes and rivers, abundant game, little
competition, milder climate...

Austin, NV

We drove through Austin as the sun went down, continuing on up the hill, looking for an NFS campground. But we resolved to drive back the next morning to have a look at this living ghost town of note. 10,000 prospectors and other frontier-types were in this valley at one time.

Seen all over town, nearly all of whose
businesses were closed

Street scene, mostly original frontier, which is not actually
all that old...

Detail

Saloon, left, library, right

Up closer

Episcopal church, built 1878, said to be one of
the finer specimens of frontier church in NV

Masons and Odd Fellows Hall

Frontier spirit

Going concern

Unfinished frontier structure

Favorite daughter/operatic star of the later 19th century, Emma
Nevada; America's answer to Lola Montez/Lili von Shtupp?

More frontier spirit; I guess he provided his own clean air and
water, safe food, transportation and communication
infrastructure, law and order, security from foreign aggression...

More frontier spirit

Trump's favorite insult is calling someone a loser; interesting
how many of his supporters are obvious losers, misfits, and
ne'er-do-wells

I think we'll just drive right on through Austin next time, if
there is a next time

The Loneliest Road

US 50 bills itself as "The Loneliest Road," and, I would add, also the ugliest, and not just the scenery. After stimulating the local economy in Carson City, we drove 50 all across Nevada and through Utah all the way to Provo. I'll have a couple or three posts on sights along the way but wanted to add these from the road itself.

Not the official signage

Salt flats

Writ in sand...

Sand Mountain...reminiscent of larger, more extensive dunes in
France, the North Island, etc.

Hundreds and hundreds of largely uninhabited miles, basin and
range, basin and range, basin and range....

Savage-camping on a pass east of Austin, NV

Occasional pioneer stuff along the way; this in a sort of park in
Eureka, NV, where we stopped for lunch in the shade; my one
abiding image of US 50 will be of the conspicuously armed
paramilitary assholes "guarding" the Chevron station in Eureka

Sculpture on a spur from 50 to Great Basin National Park

Fence sculpture

Somewhere east of Baker, NV, now probably in Utah, a
GoogleEarth street-view car passes us at a very high rate of
speed...

Evidently photographing this gorgeous terrain

Let's see, last time I photographed one of these was in 2010,
I think, on El Camino Real, in Palo Alto...

Just west of Hinckley, Utah, one of the better
shoe trees

Nearby shoe stripling

A few that didn't stick...